Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Know Your LGBT History

Dracula's Daughter (1936) is one of my favorite movies for so many reasons, including the fact that it was the first vampire movie to incorporate lesbian attraction.

The movie is a sequel to Bela Lugosi's Dracula and tells how his daughter, Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) tries to free herself from the curse of vampirism.

According to wikipedia:

The lesbian implications of Dracula's Daughter were obvious from the start and were of great concern to the Production Code Administration. PCA head Breen took special notice of the scene between the Countess and her model, Lili, writing, "This will need very careful handling to avoid any questionable flavor." The day before the scene was to be shot, Universal's Harry Zehner asked Breen to read a draft of the scene. In response, Breen wrote:

"The present suggestion that...Lili poses in the nude will be changed. She will be posing her neck and shoulders, and there will be no suggestion that she undresses, and there will be no exposure of her person. It was also stated that the present incomplete sequence will be followed by a scene in which Lili is taken to a hospital and there it will be definitely established that she has been attacked by a vampire. The whole sequence will be treated in such a way as to avoid any suggestion of perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya or of an attempted sexual attack by her upon Lili."

Gay film historian Vito Russo noted in his book The Celluloid Closet that Universal highlighted Countess Zaleska's attraction to women in some of its original advertising for the film, using the tag line "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!" He further cited Countess Zaleska as an example of the presentation of the "essence of homosexuality as a predatory weakness".[35] Some reviewers of the day picked up on and condemned the lesbian content, including the New York World-Telegram which noted the Countess's tendency to wander around "giving the eye to sweet young girls".

The infamous scene between Zaleska and Lili is seen below in the preview:

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Friday, February 26, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Dracula's Daughter

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